James Berry joins the band floating in zero gravity for a spot of beautifully unpretentious alt-country with a kinky shell. I think that’s what he said, anyway.
04/05/2005
They’re so bloody elusive, New York’s infamous alt-ethereal duo Joy Zipper, to the point of being a mythical construct. Crud missed the start of the set (hey, don’t blame us – blame the mad chap in a wheelchair blocking traffic on Charing Cross Road) but they may as well have seeped in through the air conditioning system and manifested themselves gently into human form live there on stage. It helps us to think they have. Their subtle masterpiece ‘American Whip’ floated around as a promo for a couple of years before it snuck out amid record company wrangles, under the radar and without fanfare last year. And as if to reinforce that (or maybe just to expose this writer’s inadequacies) every time they played a gig a flyer would seem to fall into my hand, or an email into my inbox, a couple of days after the event.
But here they are finally, in the flesh, before me, actually promoting a new album, which has a release date and everything (‘The Heartlight Set’ is due for release in June, along with a full UK tour). And they are as real as it seemed they wouldn’t be. Though not too much, they still retain an aura of raised untouchability. And they are as perfect as everyone has said they would be. Perfect skin, perfect bone structure, perfect melodies – analogue and digital – and perfect ambience. Beautifully unpretentious alt-country with kinks in its shell, floating in zero-gravity, rebounding off the modern age’s technological comforts, delivered by 2 people so genuinely beautiful (adorable real-life couple Tabitha and Vinny) they should be fronting a GAP campaign and owning the fashion mags’ covers, eclipsing The Kills with one smoldering glance. Basically a PR wet-dream. So why then doth they languish in cult obscurity?
That could come as a blessing for the time being though. It does still feel like you could pick them up and put them in your pocket – and that they might just let you. They banter with us, the audience, like we have history, Vinny insisting the jet-lag is sending him through a personal crisis and begging for noisy support from the room, Tabitha telling him to “shut up” with a giggle and a smile that could melt a hundred thousand million hearts. Seriously, there can’t be many in here tonight that don’t just want to marry her right away, even if that meant letting him sleep on the couch because you have too much damn respect for the man.
In the live setting everything’s all just as effortless and serene as you want it to be, the way Tabitha and Vinny’s low, melodious and, together, unusual intonations graze into one another, the way Vinny’s natural, deft touch on the guitar never leads the way, rather nudges from behind or from the left hand side, the way Tabitha massages her keys making the songs dissolve, merge and entwine. There are some songs from ‘American Whip’ (‘Valley Stream’, ‘Drugs’, ‘Dosed & Became Invisible’, the utterly wonderful ‘Christmas Song’) and a host of new ones that perhaps favour more traditional garage and country stylings with melodies still intact (Tabitha evoking equal aspects of Loretta Lynn and Sarah Cracknell), and they all sparkle with warmth. It’s between Rilo Kiley and Air, y’know somewhere really comfortable, and you have to wonder how far perfection really is off this place.
Relevant sites:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0MMY27gk33
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2004©